"Most consumers gave up on cassette tapes years ago, and the Oxford English Dictionary says it is removing the word 'cassette player' from its dictionary." This news report opens Foals' entry in German label !K7's Tapes series, indicating some desolation at the demise of the rectangular plastic medium. It's too literal an introduction to the Oxford band's wide-reaching addition to the series (which was compiled by the band's keyboardist, Edwin Congreave), clunkily and inadvertently embracing the world of fey frippery from which you imagine Foals would rather distinguish themselves.

In the UK, indie nights are more commonly referred to as "indie discos," that antiquated, mumsy terminology indicating the cozy safeness of a zone where you're never going to get frotted, daggered, subjected to a David Guetta track, or persuaded to take your clothes off and dance in a cage. Jerky, shrieky songs like Foals' "Cassius" are staples on the dancefloors of these places, where hand-wringing and shuffling are the moves of choice. (I may sound disparaging; let it be known that I spent my university nights going to an indie disco on a boat, and that I've cried at a Foals gig more than once.) The misfire of including wan royalty Blood Orange here aside, there's little on Foals' Tapes to suggest that they'd ever set foot in such a bloodless establishment by choice.

Although the compilation's second half (it's supposed to be two sides of a tape) is theoretically the more muscular, South African artist Condry Ziqubu's "Confusion (Ma Afrika)" on side one marks the start of one of the mix's more invigorating arcs. The story goes that Foals singer Yannis Philippakis ripped the song-- cheap keyboards, socially conscious lyrics, and stirring choruses-- off a tape that his mum used to play in the 80s. Congreave pushes that sense of personality through the two subsequent songs, the Invisible's deliciously louche "London Girl" (which appears to nick half the bass line from the Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight"), and the Gatto Fritto remix of JR Seaton's "Way Savvy", a dizzying, silken scramble that grips the tails of bottle rockets and hangs on for dear life.

If the rest of the mix doesn't always hit those peaks, at least it's eclectic. Nicolas Jaar's "Variations" and Bibio's remix of Clark's "Ted" open the compilation in a pastoral, ruminative place, which wriggles and womps terrifically toward the end with the Maurice Donovan Dub of Julio Bashmore's "Battle for Middle You". Most of the top comments on these songs' YouTube entries are from presumably fairly young people posting, "Thumbs up if Foals' Tapes sent you here!," which is never a disheartening thing to see. It's probably a leap too far to try and draw any conclusions about how Foals' third album will sound on account of this collection-- besides, it's too varied to be streamlined into a single influence-- but at least it transcends the nostalgic idea with which it starts, making the idea of the band taking these ideas and running with them a pleasingly feasible one.